RSSTiVo Going Down Under in 2008
By Ed Oswald | Published May 29, 2007, 3:45 PM
TiVo will begin offering service to consumers in Australia and New Zealand in 2008 thanks to a partnership with media company Seven Media Group.
The DVR maker's technology will be used to support a free-to-air digital television offering in the country. Popular features such as SeasonPass and WishList functionality, as well as broadband content, will be available to consumers.
"The Australian television market is on the cusp of a significant migration to digital television that will greatly expand the choices available on free-to-air television," President and CEO of TiVo Tom Rogers said.
"We are excited to play a key role in driving this transition by partnering with the top television network in the country to establish Seven's leadership of this transformation," he continued.
Rogers said the agreement showed that TiVo could be used with the DVB-T standard now used in Europe and Australia. It is equivalent to North America's ATSC and ISDB-T in Japan, and allows for the transmission of several channels of high quality video and audio without the need for cable or a satellite dish.
Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed and the first products and services are to be launched in the first half of next year. Along with Seven, other Australian companies have indicated interest in participating in the platform.
How soon we forget TiVo signed agreements with Comcast and Cox to provide their service on cable pvr boxes. This will hopefully replace the income from all the customers they will be losing when the directv customers can no longer run their TiVo's due to mpeg4 only dtv service.
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|TiVo's just planely going down. Its pricing is way overboard, and most US users have the option to get a DVR from Cable or Sat. co's for under $15 a month. This market is dry, so going to squeeze another huh.
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|I'm sure as with other services that head down to Australia, it'll be priced for the rich and no normal person will be able to justify its cost - especially with the limited number of channels in Australia.
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|Yeah, it sure sucks having not that many.
We only have ABC (Channel 2), Ch.7, Ch.9, Ch.10, SBS (usually full of anime, hentai, or nudity revolved foreign movies, yeah.)
Ofcourse, the cities have a lot more, but they're the only channels (edit: that is, the 5 listed above) that are digital country wide.
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|My favorite Aussie show would be Kerry Anne's. If you ever wanted to know what an in-store demonstrator of cheap household products would do if she got her own variety show, this is for you.
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|tivo has got to get numerous business models and not rely solely on the tivo device. Most companies who lasts decades have numerous products, like sony, microsoft, GE. I am actually amazed they are still alive considering they only offer one product and it has an insane amount of competition.
I mean all the cable companies have their own DVR box for a fee with no equipment to buy or contracts. What I love about tivo those is the tivo desktop functionality, and the best part is that they are continuously adding new features that are really innovative. I mean being able to transfer shows from my tivo to my laptop to watch wherever I wish? Like on a plane or whereever you wish? I mean that is cool. Tivo would be best to be bought out by a bigger company then go under though, they will be a brand name that some other company will own.
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|Lol the first thought whenever I read the title was the TiVo was actually going out of business in 08. I still think that TiVo's demise is inevitable. They simply can't compete with the Cable and Sat companies with those high monthly cost and startup cost.
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|With your analogy, nobody buys the Rolls Royce anymore because it is just too expensive. But then again, some people have more money to burn than others do.
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|Your analogy is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is if you got the money or not it really isn't worth it to get a TiVo whenever the DVR's from your television provider are about the same thing and much cheaper.
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|The only other good DVR besides TiVo is the Dish Network VIP-622 DVR. The Motorola DVR's offered by most cable companies has very slow performance when fast forwarding or rewinding recorded material. Not to mention it freezes up much of the time and seems to have a glitch where it (the cable box) mutes the audio while doing a scheduled recording.
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|See, the thing is, the cable company DVR sucks. For all but the dentally and mentally challenged Walmart crowd that makes all the difference needed.
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